Take heart, San Francisco. You may finally have a chance to beat L.A. - not in baseball, money or hipness, but in parking tickets.

Under a proposal making its way through City Hall, the cost of overstaying at a parking meter downtown would rocket up to $60 - beating Los Angeles' most expensive fine for a missed meter feeding by a whopping $20.

The proposed ticket price would also beat Chicago by $10, Seattle by $25 and Boston by $35, according to a recent survey by the city's Municipal Transportation Agency.

The only city we could find that would charge more than San Francisco's highest rate was New York, where a meter violation in the priciest part of town will set you back $65.

A $60 ticket would also reinforce San Francisco's long reign as the most expensive ticket taker in the Bay Area.

Walnut Creek, which is fast attracting shoppers from all over the East Bay who used to come to San Francisco, charges $25 for a meter violation.

And San Jose, which still seems to think people ought to drive in the downtown, charges $28.

"That may sound reasonable to you, but it seems like a lot to the people who get them," Mayor Chuck Reedsaid.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsomadmits it's "perverse and absurd" to argue for $60 parking tickets but says he has no choice.

"It's crazy," Newsom said during a recent visit to The Chronicle's editorial board. "These are tax increases, and they impact the most vulnerable people."

It isn't just downtown where fines are likely to go up.

Under the plan before the Municipal Transportation Agency, all tickets under $90 would go up $10 - including the ever-popular street-sweeping ticket, which snagged 664,361 people last year and would increase to $50.

Although Newsom says he doesn't like jacking up traffic fines, he also says it's a "fundamental reality" that the city doesn't have the money to keep the Municipal Railway going - and that hiking fines is better than hiking fares.

Increasing tickets by $10 translates to an extra $11 million a year or so for Muni.

On the other hand, every time ticket prices go up, people tend to be more careful about their parking or - after getting dinged - maybe take a look at shopping somewhere else.

Like San Jose or Walnut Creek.

Double whammy: State Sen. Carole Migdengot hit with a one-two punch Sunday - courtesy of her rival state Assemblyman Mark Leno - when delegates to the state Democratic Party convention balked at endorsing her for a second term.

Not only was the rejection an embarrassment, but the vote also cut off one of the last big sources of money the embattled Migden was counting on in her two-front fight against fellow Democratic rivals Leno and former Assemblyman Joe Nation.

Migden - who is running third in the polls - was already under the gun after the state's Fair Political Practices Commission nixed her using $1 million in the June primary that she had raised in earlier races.

Migden and her allies in the state Senate had hoped to make up the campaign cash loss by indirectly pumping about $1.5 million into the race through the Democratic Party. But they needed the party endorsement for the play to work, and Leno pulled out all the stops to block it.

And indeed, in the wake of the vote, word out of Sacramento was that some of the labor groups backing the liberal Migden may now turn their attention - and their money - into stopping the more moderate Nation instead.

Either way - Leno comes out ahead.

Here comes the judge: Rarely does a judge's race draw as much interest - or heat - as the June battle shaping up in San Francisco between Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon and his chief challenger, Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval.

Sandoval will be termed out in November, and he's turned his attention to knocking off Mellon, a 12-year veteran of the bench.

Mellon, it seems, is viewed as vulnerable because A) He's a white Republican and B) He has a courtroom reputation for sometimes being biased and brusque.

Still, knocking off an incumbent judge could prove daunting, so Sandoval appears to be using his board status to raise money by the bucket.

He's received a total of more than $100,000 in contributions so far from organized labor, development interests and no fewer than nine City Hall lobbyists and PR firms with regular business before the supervisors.

Mellon, by contrast, has reported raising only about $21,000, mostly from fellow judges.

But Mellon, a longtime friend of Mayor Gavin Newsom's father, William Newsom, has also enlisted the mayor's chief political strategist, Eric Jaye, to help run his campaign.

Jaye has wasted little time ripping into Sandoval. Among other things, he says the supervisor has failed to disclose any of his legal clients while seated on the board. Sandoval also paid his wife $20,000 in campaign funds for work on his 2004 re-election, Jaye said.

Jaye also is taking aim at Sandoval's fundraising for his judge's race while on the board.

For his part, Sandoval said he was shocked that Democrat Jaye would "spin for the Republican establishment."

As for the specifics of Jaye's attack, Sandoval would say only, "I'm running for judge and have too much respect for that office to respond to these baseless accusations.

"I'm going to run a clean campaign based on the issues," he said, "but Judge Mellon is getting very bad advice, and I hope he takes the high road as we move forward."